Going To Work On Holidays > IDEAS & IDEALS

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It may well sound very queer and weird to those people, especially to the devout Christians who are not familiar with the kind of work I do at my office, if they hear I say that I like to go to work on a holiday or holidays, when everybody is supposed to stop working and have a good rest at home or away from home. But for me whose work is easier than any other work in the world it is quite natural to try to go to work, if only things allow me to do so. In fact, I work very hard not to miss the opportunity of working alone at my office on all sorts of red-letter days in the calendar, including on Sundays. For me the real and hard work is always at home.

      You are greatly mistaken if you think that everybody can go to work on holidays, if he just wants to, but very unfortunately he can't. There is no work to be done, no business to be dealt with, and no proper persons to be met with during the holidays. Offices, banks, factories, schools and stores are closed. Most of us are grounded at home and supposed to watch TV, do some errands for wife, carry out the garbage bags, sweep and clean the house, etc. and must enjoy the rest and festivity thrown upon us by the holidays. There is no escape from it.  

      It is, therefore, no small privilege for you to be able to go to work on holidays. To be a 'holiday-worker' you must have your own office to begin with, and a kind of work that can be done by yourself in it. Suppose you share your office with many others. If you went there to work on Sunday, for example, alone in that vast and empty place and in that terrifying silence and loneliness, you could never feel comfortable with yourself and with the changed reality of the place. The terrible experience would be a lesson good enough for you never to try it again even for the world. A cozy private office to which you have free access is, therefore, a sine qua non for to be a successful holiday worker, and only a few people among so many office workers in this modern industrial society are privileged to have one.

      But still you have a long way to go and a high mountain to climb over before you become a real and earnest holiday worker. You realize anew that you have an office of your own and the work that can be done in it privately as well as independently by yourself, but to be a genuine and successful holiday worker, in addition to the two conditions mentioned above, you must be a particular as well as a peculiar person possessed by an inordinate love and passion for the work you do, and at the same time you should be a man of courage, intelligence and patience to go through so many obstacles that are lying in wait to thwart your noble enterprise.

      And you must also be very lucky; lucky enough to be free from the unavoidable social as well as family duties and obligations. You must pray very hard, therefore, that such an event as wedding, funeral, anniversary, birthday, etc., of your family, relatives and close friends, might not fall on the holiday you plan to go to work. You know you cannot disregard these events, unless you want to cease to be a member of a family and human society altogether. You also know that a good holiday worker should be, like a good Christian, a great humanist. He refuses and avoids to be emotionally dull, egocentric, and cruel. Like going to church on Sundays against all the odds, being inhuman, dogmatic, or monstrous is all against the original notion of going to work on holidays.

      Being a good and true holiday worker is, therefore, like being a good Christian, a life-long work. It should continue consistently throughout your career. You cannot become a holiday worker one day suddenly in the middle of your career and your married life. The sudden change of your life style or working habit could be misunderstood or misinterpreted by many people around you. The purpose or intention of your running  away from the sweet home and rushing frantically to the lonely and dreary place of your office would be noble and even heroic to you, but it also could be construed as a very suspicious, abnormal, morbid, and even grotesque act, especially by your wife, unless she does have absolute trust in you and in your work. Just like marriage the success of the holiday worker and working is based on mutual trust between you and your wife.

      In the very early hour of the Christmas morning a week ago, as usual, I arrived at the main door of the building in which my private office is located, and found it shut firmly as I expected it to be. It was a holy day literally, and too early hour for the unlucky as well as unhappy janitor to bestir himself. Timidly and cautiously I shouted and knocked at the door once or twice, and waited praying fervently that the man on duty today would be the man whom I knew well and who knew me well. If the janitor on duty were a new man on the job or a substitute for the holiday, then I must be prepared to undergo the third degree by him from within before he opens the door very reluctantly for me. I thanked God for mere the presence of the doorman. If I be really down on my luck, I knew from long experience, nobody would answer the door at all. The man on duty, thinking that nobody would ever bother himself to come to work so early in the morning on such a day, unless he might be a real wacko whose screws in the head were all loose, when all the normal persons in the whole world were supposed at home with their families, could go home himself leaving a phony sign on the door in large letters:

                   JANITOR ON THE ROUND, WILL RETURN SOON.

      Finally and very luckily I could enter the dark-lit building conquering all the enormous odds, walked rapidly along the dark and silent hallway, stopped before my office door, and with a throbbing heart and trembling hand unlocked it. Closing the door behind, I hastily turned on the light. And behold! The small Paradise spread before me as usual. The table and the chair, the radio, the coffee pot and the mug, books, the flower-vase with some withered flowers in it, the telephone, the old sofa, the small-size refrigerator, the electric heater, the typewriter,  - all in their usual place waiting for my touch and use. And the most important thing, the thing that always make me come to this place: solitude - the blessed mood in perfect quietness, - a truly rare and precious commodity in Seoul, the noisiest city in the world. Just being in it is a rare experience, a great sense of emotional fulfillment, a natural therapy, and an education.
                    (January 5, 1999)